On a Fix-it Day I set up shop with glue and tools and the females of the family bring me all their broken stuff and watch me fix it.

I fixed Mel's jewelry box, the girl’s music box, and a broken tea cup. The girls were fascinated by the way the music box worked, all the little gears and the cylinder and prongs. Honestly, I think music boxes are so cool I could take up making them as a hobby.

What surprised me was the flood of memories the smell of the glues brought back: the vapors instantly took me back to fixing things with my dad in my parent’s home office and the workshop in my grandfather’s basement where our family business built and repaired vacuums.  In that moment of nostalgia I experienced moment of enlightenment as well: I realized I was carrying on an old tradition and was suddenly filled with immense gratitude to my family for training me how to be a good steward of the resources God has given me by being a Maker and a Fixer.

It was a good day.

A friend of mine recently asked me to contribute his blog for skippers, young men who have opted to skip over the period of responsibility-free bachelorhood typically embraced by the last two generations of the modern western male.  So here's my contribution to the conversation over at the broom factory: Skipper Trick #5: Examine the Fight, and Never Give Up

I recently reread this passage from The Revolt of "Mother" by Mary E. Wilkins Freeman and it moved me (and convicted me) more than anything else has for quite a while.  God help me--I want to be more like this woman.

    "Sarah Penn's face as she rolled her pies had that expression of meek vigor which might have characterized one of the New Testament saints. She was making mince-pies. Her husband, Adoniram Penn, liked them better than any other kind. She baked twice a week. Adoniram often liked a piece of pie between meals. She hurried this morning. It had been later than usual when she began, and she wanted to have a pie baked for dinner. However deep a resentment she might be forced to hold against her husband, she would never fail in sedulous attention to his wants.

    Nobility of character manifests itself at loop-holes when it is not provided with large doors. Sarah Penn's showed itself today in flaky dishes of pastry. So she made the pies faithfully, while across the table she could see, when she glanced up from her work, the sight that rankled in her patient and steadfast soul -- the digging of the cellar of the new barn in the place where Adoniram forty years ago had promised her their new house should stand."